District of Columbia v. Leigh Robinson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

20 federal appellate · 10 district · 49 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Under a different rule licenses would grow into grants of the fee and permissive occupations of land become conveyances of it. “It would shock that sense of right,” Chief Justice Marshall said in Kirk v. Smith, 9 Wheat. [241] 286 [ 6 L.Ed. 81 ], “which must be felt equally by legislators and judges, if a possession which was permissive, and entirely consistent with the title of another, should silently bar that title.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Roberts v. Jaeger · O'Connor v. Beale

2. ““There is an assignment of error which in effect, though in form an attack on instructions, questions the sufficiency of the evidence to justify any recovery, and which asserts that it was the duty of the court to have taken the case from the jury. In other words, it is claimed that the trial court should have decided, and not left it to the jury to decide, that the road was a public highway. It is not clear upon what the contention is rested; whether it is rested on the ground that the road was established by the levy court, or that evidence showed beyond reasonable dispute that the road had been acquired by adverse use, or had been dedicated by plaintiffs’ predecessors in the title. But the evidence did not establish either conclusion beyond reasonable dispute. Both conclusions were disputable and disputed, and whether they were or were not justifiable inferences from the evidence, which was conflicting, was for the jury to determine, not for the court; and the court properly declined to do so. What were within the functions of the court, and what were within the functions of the jury, are questions entirely aside from the distinction between public and private ways and the manner of acquiring either, — whether by grants or by acts in pais establishing title by dedication or prescription, the propositions which counsel have learnedly argued. “There is no evidence of a formal grant. The dedication of the road, or the prescriptive right of the public to it, was sought to be p”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Lake v. State

3. ““One of these, which has been recognized in the courts of England, and in all others where the rules established in those courts have been adopted, is that possession, to give title, must be adversary. The word is not, indeed, to be found in the statutes; but the plainest dictates of common: justice require that it should be implied. It would shock that sense of right, which must be felt equally by legislators and by judges, if a possession which was permissive, and entirely consistent with the title of another, should silently bar that title. Several cases have been decided in this court, in which the principle seems to have been considered as generally acknowledged; and in the state of Pennsylvania, particularly, it has been expressly recognized. To allow a different construction would he to make the statute of limitations a statute for the encouragement of fraud—a statute to enable one man to steal the title of another, by professing to hold under it. No laws admit of such a construction.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Roberts v. Jaeger